More on That Argentina Hunting Trophy Scoring Scandal

Published: November - 2012

Last month we aired a complaint from subscriber Roger Gregg on Argentina outfitter Luis Bertone, who, Gregg says, over-scored his red stag trophy in order to charge him a higher trophy fee. (See hunt report 8817 and article ID 2845.) You'll recall that we reported how a complaint like Gregg's also touched off an investigation by the Safari Club International Records Book Committee. That resulted in a number of record book entries from Argentina being re-measured and re-ranked in the record book. According to an article in the June 2012 Safari Times, Record Book Committee Chairman Herb Atkinson stated that the investigation found a number of measurers had intentionally over-scored trophies to charge higher fees and get higher rankings in the record book. He also wrote that all but a few Argentine measurers had lost their right to score trophies for SCI until they are re-certified. Four measurers, he said, had their certificates irrevocably revoked. One of those was Luis Bertone.

We now have email correspondence from Bertone regarding the incident with Gregg and his revoked measurer's certificate. He claims that Gregg's statements are false and SCI's actions unfair.

"All these accusations are false, and I have the proofs in my emails with this person that I add at the end of this email. This man seems to be so angry with me that his only goal is to make harm to my person, even without honoring the truth.

"The truth is this man, Gregg, asked for a refund. He was a repeating client that came the first time in 2007 and a second time in 2011. After the first hunt he was also complaining about what the exporter charged for the shipment of his trophies and made me responsible for this (he was charged the same as every hunter, I think $1,000). So not to make a big deal about this, I gave him a big discount on his stag hunt in 2011 (he didn't have to pay for his daily rate). He came, and once he was here, he was........(continued)